This disclosure relates to composite blades. In one example, this disclosure relates to a composite fan blade for a gas turbine engine.
One type of typical gas turbine engine for commercial aircraft applications includes a fan section at an inlet of the engine. It is desirable to design lighter engines, including lighter fan sections, to improve fuel economy. To this end, the use of composite fan blades in the fan section has become more prevalent.
The fan section is designed to withstand ingestion of foreign objects to some degree, such as bird strikes. In particular, fan blades must withstand two failure modes experienced during ingestion of foreign objects: interlaminar shear failure and in-plane failure under severe loads induced by the foreign object impact. Fan blades constructed from composite cores wrapped in composite layers have been suggested in the art; however, these composite fan blades do not exhibit desired interlaminar shear strength.